


day one: trick/treat

by novacorps



Category: DCU (Comics), Green Lantern (Comics)
Genre: Gen, I like to think I'm funny, Pranks and Practical Jokes, or the fic where simon gets owned, simonbazweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 08:54:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10590636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novacorps/pseuds/novacorps
Summary: It started out as a joke. Really.





	

**Author's Note:**

> entry for day one of simon baz week! it's a mess, i know. i apologize. really.

It started out as a joke. _A joke._

Simon isn’t laughing anymore.

“This is evil. I feel like she’s been possessed. By the ghost of Guy Gardner, or someone equally annoying.”

Sira doesn’t even look up from her laptop. “I thought Guy Gardner didn’t exist.”

“He doesn’t. In the alternate universe where things are perfect.” Simon shakes his head. “That’s besides the point, Sira. _The point_. The point is Jessica’s gone Dark Side and I don’t know how to get her back.”

Sira hums, still reading whatever it is she’s reading. “Simon,” she begins, in her I-love-you-but-you’re-still-a-dumbass voice, “I have to remind you that you brought this on yourself.”

“It was a joke!”

Sira looks up, fixing him with a stare that seems to say ‘We both know that’s not true’, but Simon’s had enough of her judgement.

He stands up, shrugging his jacket on and heading for the front door. “It’s your house too!” he calls over his shoulder as he inspects the door frame. He still remembers the feeling of a bucket of hot pink paint washing over him. And the sound of Kyle’s laughter. And the sound of a camera clicking.

It was pretty bad all around. Especially because the paint did not come off easily.

“Jessica knows better than to mess with my house,” Sira replies. “Also, I’m on her side completely.”

“Et tu, Brute?”

Sira’s laughter manages to make Simon a little lighter as he steps outside, right up until he sees the literal hundreds of stickers covering the truck he’s spent the past few weeks— _weeks_ —restoring.

“Ring, call Jessica,” he says in a voice so calm it doesn’t sound like his.

“Calling: Jessica Cruz,” the ring says. It’s no longer quite the blank monotone it used to be; Jessica’s been encouraging him to speak to it more often, and while the ring’s voice hasn’t changed, there’s a definite tone to it now.

There’s a beat where the strange alien dialtone ends, and then—

“I wish I could see the look on your face,” Jessica cackles like the _witch_ she’s become.

“How. How did you even do that. Who did you pay. Was it Kyle? I’m going to kill him, I really will.”

Jessica snorts. “What’s the point of having a ring that’s only limited by my imagination if I can’t use to stick 1,689 stickers on a car?”

“When did you even—” It hits Simon with a sudden clarity that makes him want to turn around and pick a fight with his sister. “You turned my own sister against me?”

“All’s fair in love and war, Simon.”

Evil. She’s pure evil. “You’re going down, Cruz. Hard and fast. I broke out of Gitmo; _you do not scare me._ ” Simon is maybe being a little dramatic, but this is beyond eggs in his pillowcase or paint in his hair. This is his _car_ . This is his _life_ she’s messing with.  

Jessica’s right about one thing; this is war.

* * *

 “I’m worried about you, bro,” Nazir says, tentatively stepping in Simon’s room.

“There’s a trap over there, watch your step,” Simon says absently. He’s carefully scraping the cream out of Jessica’s not-so-secret Oreo stash and replacing it with toothpaste mixed with mayonnaise. It took some trial and error, but he’s got a _method_ now, to open the wrappers and replace the Oreos without making it _look_ like they’ve been opened. It’s ingenious. Simon is a genius and he knows it, because replacing Jessica’s disgusting comfort food stash with stuff that tastes even worse is going to _break_ her.

Or he hasn’t slept in roughly two days and he’s starting to crack up.

He’s starting to crack up for sure.

“Simon. Brother of mine. You need to sleep. And you need to apologize.” Nazir sidesteps the trap on the floor. “This is getting out of hand.”

“I have nothing to apologize for.”

Nazir raises an eyebrow _exactly like Sira_ , and again, Simon feels like maybe his best friend getting married to his sister wasn’t a good idea, but that just might be the lack of sleep talking.

There’s a warm weight on his shoulder, and Nazir squeezes, inadvertently pressing into a kink in Simon’s back. “Simon. I am saying this as someone who does care for you. Everything that has happening since the beginning of this immature prank war is entirely your fault, I do not blame Jess for escalating, and you need to stop being a child and say sorry so she’ll stop kicking your ass.”

“She is not kicking my ass!”

“She’s kicking your ass so thoroughly I feel ashamed to be legally related to you.”

“Fuck off, Nazir,” Simon sighs. “I have a reputation. Do you know who called me the other day and told me I looked great in pink? Bleez. The Red Lantern chick. A Red Lantern. I’m at least 95% sure I’m going to lose my ring because I’m pretty sure even the Guardians have seen that video. So I need to make a comeback with a vengeance. This,” he waves the Oreos in Nazir’s face, “are just the personal hit. I have something else planned.”

Nazir makes a face. “That sounds….ominous.”

Simon smirks. “It is.”

* * *

Jessica screams for approximately 5 minutes straight. It’s the most perfect, pure sound in the universe. Even better than Simon could have imagined. Sara has her hands over her ears while simultaneously attempting to get rid of the snakes that have manifested in Jessica’s apartment. Real snakes, not just construct ones, although there are plenty of those as well. It’s a mixed bag of reptiles, all truth be told, but none of them are dangerous.

The brown-green ball python is doing a pretty good imitation of aggression, though. And it’s curling around Jessica’s wrist with _intent_.

“Jessica,” Simon singsongs, holding the phone up to her face. “Jessica, there’s a snake on your wrist.”

Jessica squeaks. Sara’s lips are twitching as she carefully lifts the python from Jessica’s arm and places it on the counter. ‘You shouldn’t have done this,’ she mouths at him, although she’s still trying to keep the smile off her face. Now that the snake is off Jess, she’s shaking her arm off, hopping up and down—it’s kinda cute, but Simon’s still reveling in his victory.

Jessica stalks up to him. Well, tries to stalk. She keeps making these squeaking noises and hopping on one foot whenever a snake slithers past her, so it’s not a very good stalk. Batman would be embarrassed, really.

“I’m going to kill you,” Jess hisses, smacking him on the arm, hard. “I’m going to end your life. You are going to regret the day you crossed me, Simon Baz, because it was the day you signed your own death warrant.”

In response, Simon uses his ring to create a shower of tiny snakes that fall into her hair.

Jessica screams again.

Victory is sweet.

* * *

 Turns out, Simon’s victory is more Pyrrhic than anything else. Because now Jessica isn't holding back. Like, at all.

“I could have told you this, Simon, but when Jessica gets into prank wars, she has no chill whatsoever,” Sara says conversationally. She rummages around in the dishwasher and pulls out a clean glass. “You done goofed, my friend. Now you won’t sleep easy for the next month because she’s always plotting. _Always_.” She hands him a glass of water with a smile.

Simon examines the glass, and the water, with care. Sara rolls her eyes.

“I said I wasn't getting involved. On either of your sides.” Simon gives her the flattest stare he can manage.

“I drank a bottle of Coke and ended up on the toilet for the next ten hours. Forgive me if I don’t believe you offhand.”

Sara laughs, then tries very hard to make it seem like she isn’t laughing. “Classic Jess,” she sighs. She opens a cupboard and takes out a bowl. “You should just apologize.”

“But—”

Sara swipes a hand in front of his face. “Uh-uh. You started it, Simon, don’t pretend.”

“It was a joke! I didn't know she’d take it as, as a declaration of war!”  

Sara gives him a Look, an eerily familiar Look, and Sara is another person who should have never been introduced to his sister, because really, _this is getting ridiculous._

“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer,” she says, turning around and opening her fridge.

Simon blows out a breath, leans against the counter. “I’m being attacked on all sides.”

“Simon. Apologize. It’s that simple.”

And it’s not like Simon hasn't considered it, because sleeping without cockroaches ending up on him is so appealing, but he can’t admit defeat. Because, yes, he had started it, and yes, it was, to a certain extent, _his fault_ , but Jessica was the one to _escalate_ from little pranks, so Simon is blameless.

And anyways, Jessica had messed with his car. _His car._

Simon sets his jaw. “I did nothing wrong.”

Sara rolls her eyes. “You did some things wrong. And if you want to live a peaceful, normal life, you’ll man up and say you’re sorry. Now, get out of my house. I am going to have a nice, romantic dinner with my girlfriend and I don’t have to time to listen to you whine.”

“You’re a traitor, Sara Cruz.” Simon straightens up. “Also, I hate you.”

“That’s just fine, Simon. As long as you hate me outside.”

* * *

 It’s when Simon’s asleep that it comes to a head.

He wakes up uneasily. Not to a noise, necessarily, but something, _something_ ….

There’s a wet feeling on his face. Like water dripping from his ceiling, but thicker. More viscous. He fumbles for his lights, flicking them on with tired, fumbling fingers, and looks up.

There’s chalk-white, a sickeningly bright green, and lurid red splashed across his ceiling, all in the shape of a _fucking clown._

_A clown._

Simon doesn’t scream, but he makes a very undignified noise in the back of his throat that is in no way related to the _fucking clown_ painted on his ceiling.

He throws off his blanket and gets out of bed, only to see another fucking clown propped up in the corner. Another one in front of his door. Another in his fuckng bathroom—he actually does scream when he sees that one.

“Fuck you, Jess,” he yells, because she’s watching this, somehow, she is. “You’re dead to me. And so is Sira!” The only person who knows exactly how the movie _It_ had traumatized him as a ten-year-old—there’s no way she wasn’t the one to spill to Jessica.

He throws open his door and sur-fucking-prise, _clown._ Simon flinches violently, then grits his teeth and growls. He is not freaking out. He is not. And if creating a chainsaw construct to destroy the evil things is _overkill_ , then overkill is his middle name.

He’s out the front door when he’s confronted by the most inherently cursed thing he’s ever seen. A 7 foot, grinning, bright green clown. And it’s coming towards him, one step at a time.

“Jess. Jessica. I hate you so much.”

Jessica’s voice is somewhere behind him, dripping with smug satisfaction. “Say you’re sorry.”

The clown takes another step towards him. Simon takes an involuntary step back. His heart is hammering in his chest and his hands are sweating. He knows that his ring won’t work when he’s like this—insufficient willpower because he’s _scared_.

“Never,” he says anyways, because defeat is not in Simon’s vocabulary.

“You should,” she says, sing-song. “Hey, Simon!”

He turns to look at her, green and glowing in the dark of night, which is when the not-at-all comical sound of too-large shoes slapping on brick reaches him, and Simon realizes that _he’s taken his eyes off the clown._

“ _Audhubillah_!” he yells out, but it’s too late; the construct has already pinned him to the ground, smiling soullessly like every other clown in existence. It’s staring into his soul like it’s going to suck it out. Simon feels the cold chill of fear,

“Jess, get it off me. Get it off me right now.” Simon isn’t fucking around.

Jessica taps her chin thoughtfully. “Hmm. No.”

The clown is breathing heavily into his ear, loud, wet puffs of air. Simon closes his eyes and makes a choice.

“I’m sorry,” Simon says through gritted teeth.

“What was that?” Jessica asks sweetly. “I don’t think I heard you.”

Simon breathes out hard. “I’m sorry I put snakes in your house.”

“And?”

“And I’m sorry I covered your hallway with paper cups full of water so you couldn’t get out of your house. Even though it was literally the tamest prank on the planet.”

“And?”

Simon glares at her. “What else do you want?”

She levels her camera at him. He can just imagine how he looks, pinned underneath a clown, in his boxers and a tank. Ridiculous. “Say ‘Jessica Cruz is the best Green Lantern-slash-evil genius ever’.”

“Are you _serious_?”

Jessica just nods. And gestures for him to get on with it.

Simon breathes in deep. “And Jessica Cruz," he says, sighing, "is the best Green Lantern-slash-evil genius ever. Happy?” 

Jessica taps away at her phone, a gleeful smile plastered on her face. He can just imagine the texts he’s going to get tomorrow from everyone. Probably even from Batman. 

Justice League meetings are gonna be hell for a good, long while.

“Well, this was fun,” Jessica says cheerfully, once his humiliation has been spread to her satisfaction. “See you around, Simon!”

She turns to shoot off into the sky, but—

“Jess? The clown?”


End file.
